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Cloth to the Wind, Frost to Snow
December 10, 2017 In Fall Photography Prayer Flags Snow Weather
Several weeks ago: After days of wind the upper prayer flags are gone.  A short length of braided cotton tied around a slender branch is all that remains.  The prayer flags...
Ardor
November 29, 2017 In Climbing Fall Night
I go out of the house into the black citadel of night.  There is a sliver of moon, a dense crusting of stars, and it is very cold, about fifteen degrees.  My eyes have not yet adjusted...
My Tree, My Church: A Proleptic Sketch
November 12, 2017 In Climbing Fall Rumination Taoism Tree
On a recent Sunday morning I climb the tree, glorious and full of light.  The glory and the light are the tree’s, of course—but it lends them me, briefly.  Sometimes...
Emptying of Leaves, Filling Up With Light
October 29, 2017 In Fall Landscape Photography
Every year I am surprised all over again by the transition from the enclosed intimacy of a tree mantled in foliage to a nest of branches exuberantly open to wind, landscape,...
Leaves for Stars
October 5, 2017 In Climbing Company Fall Landscape Night
One night I climb the tree late.  I am just home from chorus rehearsal in Bridgewater.  It is a clear night with just the memory of light clinging to the horizon: a dark...
Twenty-Five
September 24, 2017 In Miscellanea
I am sitting on a couch in the Green Mountain Rock Climbing Center on a Wednesday afternoon, watching Emme and her friends scale the walls, when it suddenly hits me that the day before,...
Late-Summer Idyll; Or, TreeReading
September 22, 2017 In Miscellanea
It is Labor Day weekend. The nights have been cold, in the high 40s, and a steady rain on Sunday, but Saturday and Monday are sunny and dry. The air is no longer summer air....
A Brief, Self-Indulgently Poetic, Illustrated, Tree-Related Note on the Scottish Highlands
September 3, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Night Rumination Summer
Some landscapes speak to you.  Outside of the mountains and woods of New England, foremost among these for me have been the Annapurna mountain range in Nepal and the islands...
Stone Water Wood: The Literary-Historical Edition (Scotland)
August 18, 2017 In Miscellanea
The Stone of the Apostles, carved in the eighth or ninth century, on display in the beautiful Dunkeld Cathedral, situated on the banks of the River Tay and dating to 1260....
Stone Water Wood: A Visual Meditation (Scotland)
August 18, 2017 In Miscellanea
A visual meditation.
Beechwood (Scotland)
August 18, 2017 In Miscellanea
Among the trees in one of the most beautiful places I’ve been, a beechwood above the ocean on the Applecross peninsula after crossing the Cattle Drover’s Pass...
Nary a Tree: Quiraing (Scotland)
August 18, 2017 In Miscellanea
Nary a tree in sight but stunningly beautiful. Hiking among thistles, sheep grazing everywhere, and rabbits bounding up the slopes around us. Just the bones of the earth,...
Tree Full of Crows (Scotland)
August 18, 2017 In Miscellanea
A magnificent knotted tree, who knows how many hundreds of years old, in the churchyard of Beauly’s ruined priory from the 1200s. A handful of immaculate crow feathers...
Stone Water Wood: Argyll (Scotland)
August 16, 2017 In Miscellanea
Glorious concatenations of wood, water and stone! Neolithic standing stones at Kilmartin Glen; Loch Melfort; and a tree at the entrance to Arduaine Gardens, all in Argyll.
A Tree for the Day (Scotland)
August 16, 2017 In Miscellanea
Every day should have a tree, and this spectacular dripping dark-barked beauty was the one! In Arduaine Gardens, Argyll.
Glenfinnan (Scotland)
August 14, 2017 In Miscellanea
What a welcoming tree! I’ve never seen so many trees full of character as I have in two days of driving through Scotland. Huge and craggy or slender and elegant, weather-beaten...
Lairig Gartain (Scotland)
August 13, 2017 In Miscellanea
In a several hours of walking up this valley we see only one tree, except for two or three others not much larger than shrubs. It leans over the river we walk along and it is caked...
Stirling Castle (Scotland)
August 13, 2017 In Miscellanea
Queen Anne’s Garden, Stirling Castle, Scotland. And a very nice beech tree. Beautiful!
Gooseberries and Scotland
August 10, 2017 In Miscellanea
In half an hour we are leaving for Boston for our flight to Scotland. I do the day’s climb in the company of Emme and Claire. We bring up a container of gooseberries...
The Luminous Dark
August 5, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Night Summer
It is nearly 2 am.  The hills are awash with the darkest, most ethereal light imaginable. We drove down to Lenox, MA, this afternoon to see a production of Cymbeline at Shakespeare...
TreeSong!
July 16, 2017 In Company Summer
It is one of those perfect summer mornings—the air cool and brimming with sunlight—and the tree is full of song. Last night we went to a Village Harmony concert in Norwich...
Notes From a Week in the Tree
July 7, 2017 In Climbing Evening Landscape Night Summer Weather
Saturday, July 1:   The ground was already saturated when the rains started this morning.  And by afternoon it had become torrential, sheets of rain battering houses, trees,...
Riverwalking: Waterwoodstone
June 20, 2017 In Climbing Company Landscape Summer
Claire, Emme and I have a free afternoon.  Months ago, contemplating the distant prospect of summer, Emme proposed that in occasional spare chunks of time we go on excursions...
The June Meadow
June 17, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Spring
Tree and meadow are inseparable for me. Yes, lawn and driveway lie between, at least when looking out at the opposite hills.  I don’t walk through the meadow to get to the tree....
Margin, Matrix
June 4, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Miscellanea Rumination Spring Tree
I often catch myself thinking of the tree as having a front and a back.  It stands at the edge of the woods, and the side of the tree that faces outwards, across the lawn...
Head and Neck
May 24, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Miscellanea Spring Tree
Today I cool off in the tree after finishing a trail maintenance hike.  I am dropped off in the early morning, make the long wandering climb up to Whitcomb Hill, continue...
Maple, Poplar, Pine
May 21, 2017 In Climbing Miscellanea Rumination
The other day I was remembering the trees I climbed when I was young.  In front of our house, in the expanse of lawn enclosed by a semi-circular driveway, was a maple tree...
Darkness and Splendor
May 13, 2017 In Evening Landscape Night Photography
I have added a new photo gallery, Sunset, a collage of day’s end images from the last two years.  Enjoy!
Buds and Bubbly: Two Years in the Tree!
May 1, 2017 In Climbing Evening Landscape Rumination Spring Tree Weather
[View with images]   As of today, I have been in the tree every day for two years (with the exception of one day that first July, when I forgot, and of course the handful...
Being a Beast
April 21, 2017 In Climbing Night Reading Spring Weather
I climb the tree in the dark in a cold drizzle late in the evening after returning from Bagua.  The branches are covered in a slick organic film and I go carefully, slowly....



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